Title The transistion Debate.doc ✅

2 of production between the landlord and the serf and the eventual struggle for freedom by the serf. He says that while class conflict does not directly transform feudalism to capitalism, it does free the individual producer from the landlord. Takahashi who critiques both Dobb and Sweezy discusses the nature of feudalism on the basis of the social existence form of labour power which in the medieval period is serfdom. He criticizes Sweezy’s conception of the change resisting nature of feudal society, saying that compared to the inflexibility of eastern European feudalism, Western European feudalism is relatively fickle. He also questions the source for trade as an external factor causing movement within feudalism. He asks Sweezy where the impetus for trade comes from. Sweezy had argued for the decline of the feudal period on the basis of trade, saying that it accentuated the already extravagant tastes of the landlords thus making then increase the burden of the peasant s to satisfy these tastes. Moreover he says that trade caused the development of towns which provided a viable alternative for harassed peasants to migrate to. Both Takahashi and Dobb argue against this. Takahashi points out that in France trade ended up restoring the feudal structure. Dobb argues that the decline of serfdom was more emphasised in certain areas that lacked trade entirely where as in some areas where trade dominated were strongholds of feudalism. Both Dobb and Takahashi agree that the movements within the feudal period were caused by the class relations within a particular situation. Eventually peasant revolt leads to declining control of the landlords and the introduction of money rent. In response to this critique Sweezy finally asks: What is the prime mover during the feudal period? Sweezy himself answers the question by saying that the there was rising production during the period that had been caused by trade which he says was not external to the European economy but external to the system of feudalism. He says that feudalism had no internal prime mover but that it was disintegrated by trade. Rodney Hilton replies to Sweezy’s query about the prime mover by saying that the prime mover in feudal society is the surplus produced by the peasant. It is the extra-economic extraction of this surplus that defines the class relations between the peasant and the lord and thus defines the nature and eventual decline of feudalism. The next point of contention within this debate lay in the nature of the actual period of transition between the feudal and the capital stages.